Ottawa Week 2 / Silver Spring State Park
Hiking in Silver Spring State Park | Buffalo Rock State Park | Our Second Week in Ottawa | February 2023
We kicked off week 2 in Ottawa with a day trip in pursuit of new counties. There were 3 counties North/Northeast of us that we figured we could easily knock out, so we searched for fun places to go for hikes near our intended route. This turned out to be harder than we thought though, and through our searching we realized that we truly were near the most exciting hiking in Northern Illinois, with the closest park being Starved Rock State Park. We accepted that we wouldn’t find anything more exciting than yesterday, and decided to go through with this trip anyway since we had the whole day to drive and hike. Having the best parks closer to us was better in the long run because it meant that we could go for hikes even if we only had 1-2 hours of free time!
To start our day, we drove North on IL-71 up to Yorkville, then went West of town to visit our main hiking spot for the day, Silver Springs State Park. Here we hiked a loop starting from the East end of Loon lake, walking West along the Fox River until we reached the West end of the park, then circling back through the park and over the lake. While not as exciting as Starved Rock had been, it was still an enjoyable and peaceful walk by the water and through the woods.
After our walk, we crossed the river and took US-34 East. By driving this road up to Naperville, we were able to clinch the Southern end of the counties that we needed. It was the bare minimum, but it still saves us from having to put in the effort during any of our drives between Iowa and Michigan. We stopped at Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve in Naperville to go for another walk, but didn’t spend as much time here as we could have. The trail was super muddy and Charlotte didn’t seem to be enjoying herself. So rather than doing the long loop through the park, we turned back after a short walk.
The one thing that really made the drive worth it was finding a Giordano’s Pizza along the way. We picked up a delicious Chicago style pizza to go and enjoyed it back at our hotel.
For the first few days of week 2, Curtis was still waiting on his security clearance, so he would go to the other plant from 7-3 and wait, then return between 4-4:30. This gave us about an hour to go for a walk before the sun set. On Monday, we went to Buffalo Rock State Park which is located just West of Ottawa on the North side of the Illinois River. The park closes at sunset so we were a little rushed on our walk, but we still managed to enjoy a short loop trail with golden hour views of the river and prairie. We wrapped up the night with takeout from the Thai Cafe.
Tuesday was a rainy day, but we still went out to walk around downtown Ottawa. It was also Valentine’s day, but rather than go out somewhere nice like everyone else, we got Culver’s for dinner and saved the nice dinner for Wednesday.
Curtis finally got his badge on Wednesday, so it was his first 12 hour day. I had heard that the next day was supposed to be cold and possibly snowy, so I took Charlotte to Fox River Park to give her some exercise. That evening, Curtis had to stay up to transition to a night schedule. We went out for a late dinner at BASH Burger and Sushi House. It was a great choice for us because I can be satisfied with just a sushi roll or two, but Curtis prefers to have more meat.
Curtis stayed up until the early morning hours to shift his sleep schedule. For the rest of our time in Ottawa, he worked 12 hour night shifts. This obviously came with some challenges, namely sharing a small hotel room with Curtis sleeping during the day and me having to keep Charlotte quiet and entertained, but once we were used to it we decided we actually preferred nights to days. Curtis would get home from work by 7:30am and we would enjoy the delicious continental breakfast together, then he would sleep from 8-3ish. On nice days I would take Charlotte to a park, on colder days we would go for walks around the hotel and would spend some time with the friendly ladies at the front desk along with a wife of another engineer. Overall I didn’t feel like my days were much different than they would have been if Curtis were gone, the only difference was the lights were off in the room and I had to keep Charlotte quiet. When Curtis woke up, we would have about an hour or two to go out for a walk, either in Starved Rock, downtown, or another nearby park, and we would either grab dinner while we were out or would make something I had picked up from Aldi during the day. This was the biggest perk to the night shift — if he had been working days, then it would be dark the entire time we were together and we couldn’t have enjoyed our daily walks.
That being said, the first few days of night shift were cold and a little snowy, so we didn’t do much, just returned to Allen Park for a short walk. Overall I was really proud of us for continuing to make the most of our time here, even with opposite sleep schedules and limited time together.
